


moving slow to the sadness

by lco123



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/F, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Some Alcohol and Drug References
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-19 01:21:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7338805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lco123/pseuds/lco123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Your mother wanted to be cremated," Peter explains. "She also wanted you to have her car."<i></i></i>
</p><p> </p><p>If Spencer's going to make the cross-country trip to bring her mother's ashes home, she's going to need Emily at her side. </p><p>ON HIATUS</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set roughly two years after season 7, I'd say, though the timeline isn't critical. Vague spoilers through season 6. Subsequent chapters will be longer, this one is just setting the stage. Title from "Fire" by Augustana.

Spencer knew on a purely logical level that it was a possibility, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less when, two days before she’s set to fly across country, she gets a call from her dad saying without saying that she’s too late. That she missed her chance. 

That her mother is dead.

The past eight months have been moving toward this, though no one wanted to say it. The Hastings sojourn to Los Angeles, seeking some kind of mystical new breast cancer treatment, was nothing if not a Hail Mary, and Spencer knew in her gut that it wouldn’t work, even if she couldn’t admit it. 

If only she’d gotten out there _sooner_.

“Was she alone?” is the first thing Spencer asks. She’s read lots of stories of terminally ill people waiting to let go until no one is in the room. There are many theories as to why this is, though none of them seem very comforting right now. The idea of her mom all by herself…

“No, she wasn’t,” her father assures her gruffly. “I was with her, the whole time.” She can’t tell if he’s lying or not, but then he clears his throat, and Spencer knows what that means. There’s some business to attend to. “Listen, I need to get back to Rosewood right away and get things in order.”

“Okay,” Spencer murmurs, not really focusing on his words. She brushes her fingers beneath one eye, catching some tears in the process. She isn’t really sure when she started crying, but that’s been a common theme these past few weeks. 

“Your mother wanted to be cremated,” Peter explains. “She also wanted you to have her car.”

“Her car?” Spencer echoes. It sounds so strange. She didn’t even know her mother had procured a car during their few months in L.A.

“Yes,” Peter confirms. “You know how she always liked to drive, and we got a little Prius that she loved. Even toward the end, she’d ask me to take her on long drives around the city.” Spencer can hear some tears in her father’s voice then, and it startles her. She’s only ever heard her dad cry once, after the death of his own mother, and even then she was too young to recall it clearly now. It’s like an image rendered from a dream: fuzzy and heavy with emotion, but not quite real.

Spencer blinks a few times. She has a feeling she knows where this is going, but her brain feels too tired to put the pieces together, so she says again, “Okay.”

Peter sighs. He's probably disappointed that she's forcing him to spell this out for her. “What I’m asking, Spence, is if you could come out here, get the car and…” Peter clears his throat again. “And…your mother, and bring them both back East for the service.”

Spencer props her head in her hands. “That’s, like, a forty-hour drive, Dad,” she points out.

“I know,” Peter says. “But it might be good for you. Get you out of D.C. for a bit. Give you some time to think and—and process.”

Spencer doesn’t really know what to say to that. She doesn’t know what to say to anything. Her entire body has felt cold ever since she heard the news. “Okay,” she hears herself say for the third time this conversation. She’s not sure where she finds the words, but more come now, louder than the ones before them: “I’ll do it.”


	2. Chapter 2

For a few different reasons, she calls Emily first.

They both knew this was coming, and Spencer can hear that in Emily’s voice when she says hi. After Spencer tells her, they both cry: a soft, snuffly cry from Emily and a deep, rattling one from Spencer—the kind that indicates she’s been sobbing on and off for days. Emily talks a little about her dad and Spencer listens, unable to form many words at the moment. And then after a bit Emily says, “So should I meet you at the airport on Tuesday?”

“What?” Spencer says blearily.

“You’re still keeping your same ticket, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, so I could pick the car up,” Emily suggests, voice still a little soggy. “Or if you’d prefer to be the first one to drive it, we can take a cab back to your folks’ apartment. I’m guessing you’ll want to get on the road right away, so we could leave the next morning.”

Spencer sighs. “Em, it’ll be days of driving. You don’t have to sign on for that.”

“Of course I do,” Emily replies. “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. I’m coming with you.”

Spencer bites down on a small smile, her first of the day. “You sound like me,” she remarks.

“I’ll choose to interpret that as a compliment,” Emily replies. 

“You absolutely should,” Spencer quips.

Emily forces a chuckle, dry and without much humor. “So,” she says. “I'll meet you at baggage claim?”

Spencer can see there’s no use arguing here, and she doesn’t want to anyway. If Emily is offering to be there for her, she’d be a fool to reject her. “I’ll see you soon.”

 

Peter bought her a first class ticket a few weeks ago, and Spencer is immensely grateful for it now. She leans back in her cushy seat, drinks two-and-a-half vodka tonics, and falls asleep with her noise-canceling headphones on. When she wakes up, the plane is descending and Spencer is disoriented and drunk. Which is weird, because Spencer gets lovey and happy when she’s drunk, and this situation is anything but that.

She somehow navigates her way to baggage claim and spends about five minutes wandering around before she hears a voice sharply call out, “Spencer!” She whips around and there’s Emily, in jeans and a flannel, looking pretty and concerned, and a lot like home.

Spencer clumsily lurches forward into Emily’s arms and is hugged back automatically. There’s a choked noise that sounds like something between a sob and a bark of laughter, and it takes Spencer a second to realize that she’s the one making it. “Hey,” Emily murmurs, petting her hair. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” Spencer burrows her head further into Emily’s shoulder. She’s sure she’s getting snot on Emily’s shirt, but if Emily notices she doesn’t say anything.

“Let’s get your bags, okay?” Emily suggests after a moment. Spencer slowly draws back, sorry to lose the familiar, toasty scent of Emily’s perfume. It’s the same one she’s used since senior year, a fact which Spencer finds deeply comforting.

They don’t say much as they get Spencer’s bags and leave the airport, but once they’re settled in the cab Emily takes her hand and asks, “So, how are you doing, really?”

Spencer tilts her head to the side. She’s sure she looks a little ghoulish, with tears welling in her eyes and a small, sloppy smile plastered to her face. “I have no clue,” she answers honestly. “I just—I can’t get over the fact that I wasn’t there.”

Emily nods. “I know,” she says softly. “I totally get that. But she wasn’t alone. She had your dad.”

Spencer chuckles mirthlessly. “I don’t know if she ever really _had_ my dad,” she replies. “Not in the way she should have.”

“They loved each other,” Emily says, though it sounds like a bit of a question.

“They did,” Spencer confirms. “But it was far from a perfect marriage.”

Emily shrugs. “There’s no such thing, really.”

Spencer tips her head back against the seat, thankful for the cushion, thankful for the warmth of Emily’s hand against her own. “You’re not wrong,” she replies. She turns to look out the window at the city, sprawling and bright, too filled with places and cars. She can’t imagine her mother in this place. 

Quickly, Spencer shifts her gaze back at Emily. She’s a much better sight.

 

The apartment feels much more Veronica than the city itself. It’s small, but very tasteful, all marble countertops and hardwood floors. Part of Spencer wishes her dad had waited a day to return to Rosewood so they could have a few minutes together in this space, but she’s not sure what comfort they’d be able to provide one another. And Melissa…she has no idea how she and Melissa would do here. They talked briefly on the phone, right before Melissa boarded her plane back from England to Pennsylvania, and neither knew what to say. 

(And there’s a very small, dark part of Spencer that’s grateful Melissa wasn’t here either, that for once the two of them are on an even playing field. And that thought makes her feel like a monster, and was part of the reason for her third vodka tonic on the airplane.)

“This place is nice,” Emily comments as she gets the bags inside, Spencer’s two alongside her one. “I mean, I wouldn’t expect anything else from your parents, but still.”

Spencer nods, stepping further into the apartment. “You’d never know someone was actively dying here,” she remarks. “My dad must have paid extra for the quick cleaning crew.”

Emily raises an eyebrow and looks like she wants to say something, but doesn’t. “She didn’t actually die here,” Spencer tells her. “That happened at the hospital.” Spencer’s voice sounds foreign to her own ears. She walks over to the plush cream couch and plops down. “It’s like The Radley, y’know? With enough money and disinfectant, any place can seem shiny and new.”

“And free of ghosts,” Emily adds, coming to sit beside her with a handbag over her shoulder. “Not that your mom is a ghost.”

Spencer shrugs. “Eh, I’ve been haunted by worse.” She gestures to the bag Emily’s clutching close. “What’cha got in there?”

“Lots of stuff,” Emily replies, reaching into the bag. “But I wanted to show you this map.” She begins unfolding a large paper map of the United States, and Spencer can see she’s drawn out a route between L.A. and Rosewood.

“You have an actual physical map?” Spencer comments with mild amusement.

Emily raises one shoulder. “I don’t trust my GPS,” she says. Spencer lets out a little giggle at that. It almost sounds too loud in the quiet apartment. She looks down at the map, tracing her finger over the red ink and humming in approval.

“We can’t leave tomorrow,” Spencer remembers. “The ashes won’t be ready until Thursday morning.”

Emily nods, unfazed. “Okay. Do you want to leave Thursday afternoon, then?”

“Sure,” Spencer says. The dozens of different highways on the page start to get dizzying, and she drops her forehead into her hands, rubbing her temples with her thumbs. She’ll probably have a headache in the morning. “Are you sure about this?” she asks.

“Yes,” Emily answers immediately. Spencer can’t see her, but she’s sure there’s a look of determination on Emily’s face. “One hundred percent.” Her voice softens as she adds, “I even made you a playlist.”

Spencer glances up at her. “You did?”

“Mmm hmm,” Emily says. She reaches back into her bag and pulls out her phone, unlocking it to show Spencer. In her Music app, there’s a playlist with the title _For Spencer Hastings When She Needs a Pick-Me-Up (Road Trip to Rosewood)_.

Spencer smiles. “That’s really sweet, Em,” she says.

“It’s kinda silly,” Emily says, embarrassed.

Spencer shakes her head. “No,” she insists. “It’s not. Can I see what's on it?”

“Nope,” Emily replies. “There’s a system to it. You’re going to have to let me call the shots here.”

Spencer narrows her eyes. “I’ve never been good at that.”

Emily puts her phone down and scoots closer, and Spencer takes that as an invitation to lean her head against her shoulder. “Do you trust me?” Emily asks.

Spencer lets her eyes drift shut. Emily’s shoulder is soft and warm, and Spencer doesn’t feel cold for the first time in days.

“Always.”


	3. Chapter 3

Spencer does wake up with a headache, but Emily’s already gone out and gotten them coffee, breakfast sandwiches, and even a bottle of aspirin. “I figured this may come in handy,” she explains when Spencer comments on it. 

“I’m going to wager that you figured right,” Spencer replies, knocking back two pills with a swig of coffee. She breathes in deeply and takes another long, slow sip, her eyes fluttering closed. “You are a god, Emily Fields.”

Emily laughs and walks back to the kitchen. Spencer has yet to move from her spot on the couch; she slept there last night, unable to handle sleeping in her mom’s bed. Emily fought her on it, repeatedly pointing out that Spencer’s body would curse her for it in the morning, before finally relenting and taking the bed for herself. Emily wasn’t wrong—between a day of flying and a night spent scrunched up on the couch, Spencer feels like her whole spine is out of whack. It isn’t helped by the fact that she hasn’t been able to sleep for more than a few hours at a time these past couple months.

Emily must notice her stretch and yawn because she eyes Spencer warily. “Have you been sleeping?” she asks softly. Spencer shrugs and shakes her head. Emily squares her shoulders and rummages in her bag for a second. “I figured as much,” she says. “Which is why I brought this.” Spencer’s eyes take a second to register what she’s holding up, but when they do, she raises an eyebrow.

“Pot?” Spencer says with surprise, taking in the baggie in Emily’s left hand and the small glass pipe in her right. “What’s a good girl like you doing with that stuff?”

Emily raises a shoulder self-consciously and sets the items down. Spencer’s curiosity has gotten the best of her, and she rises off the couch to join Emily in the kitchen. “A girl I used to bartend with deals on the side,” she explains. “I don’t smoke much—hardly at all, really—but it helps me sleep sometimes. I know I could try meds, but after everything with Dr. Rollins and—”

Spencer sets a hand over Emily’s, effectively cutting her off. “Believe me, I get it,” she says. “I’m the last person who would judge you about something like this.” She smiles when she feels Emily relax. “It’s kind of nice to know you have a wild side.” It comes out more gravelly than she intended, sounding almost suggestive. Spencer clears her throat and draws her hand away.

Emily looks up a bit impishly. “Anyway,” she says, “I’m not suggesting we light up right now, or anything, but it’s an option if we need it.” Her smile slips into a small smirk, as she adds, “Or want it.”

Spencer laughs, and for the first time in a while it doesn’t feel tinged with bitterness. “Oh, this is going to be one hell of a road trip, isn’t it?”

Emily giggles in return. “One for the record books, I’m sure.”

 

They aren't especially productive on Wednesday. Peter asked Spencer to pack up a few things to bring back, but there isn’t much. In the short time they were living in L.A., Spencer’s parents clearly weren’t decorating, and beyond that, the cleaning crew that Peter hired a few days prior shipped back some boxes. There are only a few small, sentimental things: some framed photograph from their room, a couple of sweaters that Veronica wanted specifically left behind for Spencer, three bottles of expensive scotch that Peter didn’t trust the cleaning crew to handle. 

“The essentials,” Spencer remarks as she unscrews one of the bottles and takes a hearty swig. She hands the bottle to Emily, who hesitates for about ten seconds before taking a tentative sip. 

“Will he be mad?” Emily asks after they’ve drank enough for it to be noticeable (both in her demeanor and the bottle).

“Nah,” Spencer says. “If anything, he’ll be proud.” She raises the scotch toward the ceiling, as though beginning a toast. “This is how us Hastings cope.”

“It’s how the Fields cope too,” Emily snickers. “We’re just in more denial about it.” She sits up from the arm of the couch and grabs a slice of pizza. They ordered it hours ago, both realizing how incredibly hungry they were sometime around six o’clock. It’s nearly eleven now, and Spencer’s plan of going to bed early so they could be well-rested for tomorrow’s drive has fallen by the wayside. Or maybe it was Emily’s plan; she can’t remember now.

“We should get some sleep,” Emily says, as though reading her mind.

That suddenly sounds like the last thing Spencer wants to do. “Fuck that,” she says. “I haven’t been around sloshed Emily Fields in forever.”

Emily gazes at her warily. “You’re the fun drunk, remember? I tend to get a little—”

“Nihilistic?”

“I was going to go with dark and broody,” Emily says. She doesn’t look offended by Spencer’s word choice.

“I remember,” Spencer comments bemusedly. She takes another sip of scotch and hands the bottle back to Emily. And then—maybe it’s the booze, maybe it’s her grief, maybe it's the way Emily pushes a hand through her hair—Spencer says, “It’s pretty hot, actually.”

Emily chokes on the scotch, a little bit spluttering out of her mouth, and pounds her chest as she gets the sip down. The sight makes Spencer start to giggle, uncontrollably, and soon they’re both pretty much doubled over, though for different reasons. “Did I startle you?” Spencer asks between gasps of air.

Emily sets the bottle down, sucking in a large breath. “Yes!” she says sharply. “What the hell was that about?”

Spencer shrugs, deciding to go with nonchalance. She isn’t exactly sure where this is going to take her, but that might be okay. “It’s no big shocker that you’re hot, Emily. You’ve pretty much always had a steady stream of pussy, ready and willing.”

Emily’s eyes close and open, her face tight in a grimace. “Okay, first of all: I cannot handle you calling me hot and using words like ‘pussy’ within the span of two minutes. And second of all: _you_ are not allowed to think I’m hot!” she says indignantly. 

“Why not?” Spencer challenges. “Do you think _I’m_ hot?”

“I’m not allowed to think you’re hot either!” Emily sputters.

Spencer smirks. “So you _do_ think I’m hot.”

Emily flaps her arms, looking completely at a loss. Spencer has to admit: this is sort of fun. 

(Does that make her Alison? God, she never wants to do that to Emily, but she’s too drunk to contemplate that right now.)

“There is a line,” Emily says deliberately. “A boundary that cannot be crossed. Because we’re friends, first and foremost, but I'm gay and I have eyes, so it’s important that my straight female friends stay in a certain category.”

Spencer bites her lip, her smile dying. She gets that. She doesn’t want to make this hard for Emily. But there is one important clarification she has to make. “That makes sense,” she says. “But, uh, for the record:”—she points to herself—“not so straight.”

Emily’s eyes bug out a bit but otherwise her reaction is fairly neutral. “Okay,” she says, blinking a few times. “Okay, cool. Good to know.”

“Yeah,” Spencer says softly. “Kind of figured that out after Caleb and I split. I wasn’t hiding anything, I just never found an easy way to—”

Emily leans forward and places a hand over Spencer’s own. If she feels weird about them touching after this conversation, she doesn’t let on. “I get it,” Emily tells her. “And I’m the last person who would judge you about something like this.”

Spencer smiles slowly, and relaxes against Emily’s touch.


End file.
